The Rt. Hon. Sir John Major KG CH

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  • Sir John Major’s Interview on BBC’s Newsnight – 1 May 2026

    The interview with Sir John Major broadcast by BBC Newsnight on 1 May 2026.

    Matt Chorley: Sir John Major was born on 29 March 1943 to Gwen, a librarian and part-time dance teacher, and Tom Major-Ball, a former trapeze artist and music hall performer who later ran a successful garden ornaments business. Young John underperformed at school in Brixton, leaving with just three O-Levels. But a chance meeting with his local MP led him into politics. He became a Conservative MP in Margaret Thatcher’s 1979 landslide victory, then rose through the ranks pretty quickly to become first Foreign Secretary and then Chancellor. Within 15 months of taking his first great office of state, he reached the greatest, replacing Margaret Thatcher as Prime Minister in November 1990 at the age of 47. He went on to win the 1992 election with the most votes ever recorded for a British political party before losing to Tony Blair’s New Labour landslide in 1997.

    I’m delighted Sir John joins me now. It’s great to see you. Thank you. Can you take us back to that church fete, the turning point, it seems, the moment where you discovered politics?

    Sir John Major: Well, I discovered it before that. I read a lot of history and politics always fascinated me. I remember the church fete very well. The vicar was a delightful man. So was his daughter. We were friends. I was at the church fete and the local Labour Member of Parliament, Colonel Lipton, Marcus Lipton, who had been there since 1945, attended every church fete in the constituency. I don’t think church fetes were legitimate unless Marcus was there.

    He talked to me and we talked about politics. He must have realised that I naturally moved to the right of centre rather than the left of centre. But he saw I was interested and he kindly offered me some seats in the gallery in order to watch Parliament in session. I did that and I saw a small part of a very boring part of the year really, but not for me. I was thrilled. It was the debate on the Budget in the mid-1950s and I saw on the benches Iain Macleod, Harold Macmillan was there, Rab Butler was there for a brief time. When I walked into that building, it reached out and grabbed me. When I left, I thought, this is where I wish to be, and my mind never moved away from that.

    Matt Chorley: It didn’t focus you on your schoolwork, though. You clearly didn’t think, “I need to knuckle down if I want to get into the House of Commons.” In fact, I was looking, you didn’t do all that well at school. You were one of only eight Prime Ministers ever not to go to university, a grammar school boy, not privately educated. Do you think that now we’d call that a great backstory, but did you feel like that held you back in your pursuit of getting into politics?

    Sir John Major: Of course it did. Absolutely. And it was very stupid. The background to that is not straightforward. My father was 65 when I was born. When I was 10 or 11 and went to Rutlish, having passed the 11-plus, he was very sick and also nearly blind with cataracts. He had lost all our money. We didn’t have much, but what we had he had lost in a business venture. So we moved from a bungalow in Worcester Park to two rooms, four storeys up, in an old Victorian house in Brixton. That is where we lived.

    Matt Chorley: Is it still there?

    Sir John Major: It is. It’s still there. It’s hardly changed. We lived in just the two rooms. There was nowhere there to study. They insisted that I stayed at Rutlish, which was at Wimbledon, so I had to travel back and forth from Brixton to Wimbledon every day. I was pretty rebellious at school. I didn’t like it. I wasn’t comfortable there. I felt alienated by life. It was extremely stupid. So I just didn’t work, except at the things that interested me, which were mainly history and English. The result of that was a lamentable record at school and the need to get up at 05.00 each morning after I left school aged 16, studying, taking more O levels and a banking degree and other matters.

    Matt Chorley: These days, the House of Commons is very different to the House of Commons that you entered. Fewer trade unionists in the Labour Party, fewer business people in the Conservative Party and so on. A lot has changed. Do you think that has changed for the better?

    Sir John Major: No, I don’t. I certainly don’t. If you take both parties, if you look at the Labour Party, and I have no animosity against the Labour Party. I grew up in a Labour area. I didn’t agree with their policies, but I saw decent men trying to do a decent job on Lambeth Council.

    I looked at the Labour Party when I got into the House of Commons and there were lots of ordinary, everyday people, people without money, without privilege, working-class people who really knew their constituents. They may not have got degrees in English, but my goodness, they knew how their constituents lived. They cared about that and they represented that in the House of Commons. That doesn’t happen in the Labour Party now. They are much younger, much better educated and, in my judgement, much less close to their constituents than their predecessors were.

    You can see it on the Conservative side. Where are the businessmen? Where are the soldiers? Where are the people who would have been a staple part of the party in the 1950s, 60s and 70s? They are very sparse now on the Conservative benches. There has been a change in nature and I think that is partly because of the way in which politics is disregarded by so many people these days. Many of the people who would be a very happy addition to Parliament simply will not contemplate going into politics. I hear that theme again and again and again. There are many reasons for it, which we both know and I think the whole world knows, but it is a loss to Parliament in my view.

    Matt Chorley: Would the John Major of when you first went into politics, from your background and experience, consider going into politics now?

    Sir John Major: I couldn’t not do so. I am out of politics now and I had no regrets about leaving politics when I was in my early 50s. No regrets whatsoever. But there are moments when I see things happening and I wish I was still there, because I would have a voice to point out things that I had seen being done before and I know they went wrong. Experience and a long memory, an historic memory, in Parliament is very useful. It can stop many mistakes being made. So there are moments when I wish I was back in politics, but they are fleeting moments and they are entirely overridden by the fact I couldn’t take the divorce if I were still in politics.

    Matt Chorley: Norma would have something to say?

    Sir John Major: Norma would have something to say. And so would my children.

    Matt Chorley: Let’s talk about this. You become an MP and most people, when they become an MP, even if they only say it to themselves at night, probably privately harbour the idea that one day they might be called upon to become Prime Minister. But it happens to you in 1990. The Conservatives had been trailing in the polls for months. Geoffrey Howe’s devastating speech to Margaret Thatcher leads to Michael Heseltine’s challenge. You, though, Sir John, miss much of the drama because for some time you had been nursing a painful wisdom tooth and you were under the dentist’s anaesthetic while everyone else was plotting. Yet you wake up, you are coming round from the anaesthetic and the conversation almost immediately turns, with Norma and your daughter Elizabeth, to the prospect of you possibly throwing your hat in the ring. Was it the drugs?

    Sir John Major: Well, you may say so. Others may have wished so. No, it wasn’t. The tooth has become a subject of myth over many years, with people saying he didn’t have a tooth problem at all, he was just getting out of the way and plotting, which is entirely absurd. If anyone would care to go to the hospital in Essex, I had the wisdom tooth out under full anaesthetic. It was an abscess under a wisdom tooth that I had been nursing for a couple of months. I had a hospital appointment. I wasn’t going to cancel it. I had suffered from that enough. I didn’t anticipate, frankly, the degree of drama with Michael’s challenge to Margaret.

    But when Margaret decided she wasn’t going to stand, I was approached by a lot of people to see whether I would stand. I hadn’t been contemplating it. I can honestly say that. My daughter was coming up to A levels, my son to O levels. I had just got the job I really wanted in politics, which was Chancellor. I can honestly say, hand on heart, that I was not contemplating being Prime Minister.

    But I was approached by a number of people. I then learned that some people had been canvassing on my behalf. I said to my parliamentary private secretary, “Look, I don’t know how many votes. I don’t want to humiliate myself by getting a few votes.” He was a very good listener, one of those rare politicians who listens rather than talks, and he said, “Well, I think I can guarantee you 150 votes if you stand. Dare you say no to that?” I couldn’t really.

    I remembered the old Iain Macleod maxim. It was Macleod as much as any individual politician who took me into politics. He was a magnificent orator, not just in how he spoke but what he said. He once said, “If the ball comes out of the ruck, you grab it. It may never come out again.” That was pretty much how I felt. I was confident that I wasn’t going to be humiliated, so I decided I would stand.

    Matt Chorley: You write in your memoirs that for large parts of that period, actually right up until almost the moment you won, you were stuffed with painkillers. It was an extraordinary moment, with you dealing with this pain in your mouth while each day getting closer to becoming Prime Minister.

    Sir John Major: Yes. The campaign only lasted a week and it was the best-natured campaign I think I have seen in all my years in politics, between Michael Heseltine, Douglas Hurd and myself. We all knew one another extremely well. I was particularly close to Douglas Hurd. I didn’t know Michael quite so well. It only lasted a week.

    As the campaign began, the painkillers were winning over the pain quite comfortably, so we sailed through the week’s campaigning. It wasn’t a difficult week of campaigning because we weren’t in the business of slagging off one another. We had worked together in the past, we would work together in the future. Whatever had happened, the three of us would have been together in the Cabinet. So it was a very good-natured campaign and it went quickly.

    Matt Chorley: Michael Heseltine has, of course, concluded that he who wields the knife doesn’t wear the crown. If you are the person who leaps first, you end up not getting the top job. Do you think he is right about that? Are there lessons for today?

    Sir John Major: I’m not entirely sure about that. Lloyd George might argue to the contrary, and so might others. I think it can be a disadvantage. It depends on the nature of the relationship between the departing Prime Minister and the wielder of the knife.

    Matt Chorley: Tell me about that moment when you become Prime Minister. You go to the Palace. You had obviously been into Number 10 before, but it is very different going as a minister than it is as Prime Minister. What is going through your mind during the drive?

    Sir John Major: Several things really. Firstly, I wondered how this ceremony goes. Does kissing hands mean literally? It doesn’t. It means figuratively. What exactly are we going to talk about? So I was thinking about the Queen and how that would work out.

    A different compartment of my mind was thinking about what I was going to say when I got back to the doorstep. That was certainly occupying my mind. Two other things were occupying my mind. A new Prime Minister within two years of an election: we were going to have to have some Cabinet changes, and that was going to be awkward. I had only been in a Cabinet for three years. I was younger than most of the Cabinet. I had been there less time than most of the Cabinet. I was going to have to say to very senior people who had been there much longer than me that it was time to go and to bring some new blood into the Cabinet. Nobody likes destroying someone’s career. Only sadists like that.

    Beyond that, I was very conscious of the problems we faced. You touched on some of them. The party was deeply split on the European Union, deeply. I felt as though I was standing on either side of a widening chasm. The poll tax was still around and had to be destroyed. Michael Heseltine had to come back into the Cabinet. Those last two points were bound inevitably to upset Margaret Thatcher: her poll tax, I was going to have to abolish it; and her assassin, as she saw Michael, was going to have to come into the Cabinet. So one could see immediately that there were going to be problems that lay ahead. It was only a short ride from Downing Street to Buckingham Palace, but I remember very plainly, almost as though different components of the mind were thinking of these things.

    Matt Chorley: It is often said that being Prime Minister is a lonely job because so few people have been there and done it. When you were there, still alive were former Prime Ministers Margaret Thatcher, Jim Callaghan, Harold Wilson, Ted Heath and Alec Douglas-Home. Were you able to reach out? Clearly the relationship with Margaret was difficult because of the circumstances of you becoming Prime Minister. Is there a gang of former Prime Ministers who all talk to each other?

    Sir John Major: I had no difficulty with the other Prime Ministers at all. The one who from time to time was most helpful was Jim Callaghan, who had a similar background to me and understood the difficulties. He understood the restraints in 1990s society, and from time to time he was very helpful. Harold Wilson by then was clearly ill, and when I talked to him we met in the corridors and discussed Huddersfield Town Football Club, of which Harold was a tremendous supporter.

    So I had no difficulties there. When I met Margaret, there was never any difficulty. The first time I met her was at a by-election in 1978 in Berwick and East Lothian, which we lost. I was very impressed, because it was thought we were going to win the by-election. She had been there for a morning and came in and talked to me just after lunch, and she knew we were going to lose it. Her sensitive political antennae had grasped the fact that it wasn’t right, and I was hugely impressed by that.

    I had a very good relationship with her. We had a furious fight when I was a young whip. We disagreed severely about something and everyone thought my career was over. The next day she came and sat next to me on the bench and said, “Well, we’d better regroup and discuss these matters again.” Three weeks later she gave me a job in government. I remember her saying to me when she gave it to me, “It’s the job I started with. If you learn about social security, you’ll be better equipped than most of the parliamentary party for the future.”

    Matt Chorley: You mentioned that when you became Prime Minister, you knew there was a general election certainly within two years. In that election in 1992, there was an expectation that Labour were going to win it under Neil Kinnock.

    Sir John Major: More than an expectation. It was almost written into the stars.

    Matt Chorley: What was it for you? There has been endless discussion: was it the Sheffield rally, was it the soapbox? What was it for you?

    Sir John Major: I never quite agreed with the way the opinion polls were going all the way through the campaign. It may simply have been my naivety, but everywhere I went I got a very large and warm welcome. Everywhere. There was no hostility. I was surprised about that. We had been in power for 11 years and people were plainly tired of the problems over the poll tax and Europe, and yet there was an immensely warm reception everywhere I went.

    So I had this blind faith that, having come from where I did to where I was, it wasn’t going to end that quickly. I thought throughout the campaign that we would win. We had a very large lead in votes, you may recall. It was only a slender lead of 21 in seats, but we had a seven per cent lead in votes. We should have had a majority of 70 or so if the votes had been distributed, but of course they weren’t.

    Matt Chorley: The record for any party in a general election still stands. Given the way our politics is going, with more and more parties, do you think that record will ever be broken?

    Sir John Major: Ever is a long time. But I don’t think it is going to be broken in the near future, because there is going to be a greater dispersal of votes, which raises a whole series of other questions.

    Matt Chorley: Soon after that 1992 election you discussed with Chris Patten the idea that you had stretched the elastic and defied expectations. You then spend the next five years assuming that you wouldn’t win in 1997. I wondered whether it would be better for governments if they behaved like they weren’t going to win and did what they thought was right by the country, rather than chasing percentage points in the polls.

    Sir John Major: There was a bit of that. It sounds rather gallant to say you proceed entirely on that basis. Of course we wanted to win the election. But we managed to find a way of losing it quite comprehensively, and we had a lot of assistance from my colleagues in doing so.

    For Europe, there was a changing of the guard in 1992. The elderly members who had been in the war or soon after and in the services were very pro-European in the Conservative Party because they never wanted to see a European war again. A lot of them retired in 1992 and were replaced by much younger and more recently baked Conservatives who had a much more Eurosceptic view. So the huge majority for Europe in the Conservative Party that existed in 1991 had gone in 1992. We faced a completely different parliamentary party. Although we had a majority of 21 nominally, on European matters we barely had a majority at all. Very soon, with by-elections, that bare majority was whittled away.

    Matt Chorley: Was it then, in 1992, that the seeds of Brexit were sown in that generational shift in the Conservative Party?

    Sir John Major: They were there before. Going right back to Enoch Powell and others, there were people who were, let me say, unenthusiastic, which would be a kind way of putting it, about Europe. But it was in the 1990s that the numbers began to grow. They began to grow because of opposition to the Maastricht Treaty, and that was very odd. You may say, why is it odd? Because the Maastricht Treaty did all sorts of extraordinary things, but every one of those things was actually preordained in the 1986 Single European Act. We had signed up to a whole range of things that were in the Maastricht Treaty, and the very people who had signed up to that treaty now opposed it, and opposed it violently. The new members followed them, and they became more and more of a thorn in the side.

    Matt Chorley: In 1993, you were caught on camera calling some of your Eurosceptic Cabinet ministers “bastards”. Do you have any regrets about that?

    Sir John Major: I remember that very well. It was a BBC feed that was left on when I was speaking privately to a single person, and the feed crept under the door and they chose to use it. Of course I shouldn’t have said that. My only excuse is that it was true.

    Matt Chorley: As the pressure built over time and you faced more criticism, in 1995 you pushed what many thought was the nuclear button and challenged your opponents to put up or shut up. One of our listeners, Mike, got in touch and said, “My question to John Major would be: what would you do if you were in Keir Starmer’s shoes, assuming local elections are bad as well? Would you advise doing what you did, put up or shut up, or is this a case of different party, different circumstances, different times?”

    Sir John Major: I think the circumstances are very different and the times are very different. Enough has been said by enough people about that particular issue. I don’t really wish to add to it.

    Matt Chorley: Did you think you would win when you did that back in the 1990s?

    Sir John Major: I wasn’t sure. I was prepared for the fact that I might have to resign. I didn’t think I was going to be defeated in the ballot, but I had put in a sealed envelope the number of votes I had to have in order, in my mind, to credibly stay. We exceeded that number by three votes. So it was very close. Four votes less and I would have resigned.

    Matt Chorley: When you weren’t dealing with your own MPs, you were dealing with Tony Blair in the latter stages across the despatch box. Prime Minister’s Questions is the part of politics that most people see on the news, and he was pretty remorseless to you during PMQs. “I lead my party. He follows his.” Calling it “weak, weak, weak”. Did any part of you enjoy Prime Minister’s Questions?

    Sir John Major: It was a very good line. I don’t know who wrote it for Tony, but it was extremely good. If I were in his position, I might have done exactly the same thing, because I was in a position where, whatever I did, half the party would disagree with it. I was trying to bring the party together. My fear from the moment I became Prime Minister was that the European issue could break the Conservative Party apart, as free trade had done in the past. That was very inhibiting as to what you could do, and it provided Tony with that opening.

    Matt Chorley: You also faced a lot of hostility from the media during that period.

    Sir John Major: Surely not.

    Matt Chorley: It is said, and I have interviewed people who worked with you at the time, that there was a feeling among some that you focused too much on the media, that you read the papers too closely. With the benefit of hindsight, do you think they were right?

    Sir John Major: Possibly. But it’s difficult to know what you’re facing unless you hear about it and read about it. It is very easy to say. I seem to recall it was Franklin Roosevelt who read 18 newspapers a day, something of that sort. Yes, I suppose you could say I wasted too much time reading things that were unnecessary, but you needed to be prepared. If you are suddenly asked a question and you don’t know why the question has come, you could be in a very difficult situation.

    Senior politicians face that today with social media. They may be going around the country, they’ll be stopped, they’ll be asked a question about an event that has happened on the other side of the world, and they don’t know of the event. Sometimes they are foolish enough to commit themselves and get themselves into a great deal of difficulty.

    Matt Chorley: I was thinking about the way that everything has sped up, rolling news and then social media. Thinking of a drama like Black Wednesday, do you think you could have survived Black Wednesday in a world of social media, with the sort of frenzy that people whip themselves up into?

    Sir John Major: It could hardly have been worse if social media had been there. There is a great deal behind that. Many of the myths in it still survive, but it was extremely difficult. It lingered a long time and it marked us.

    There were two things about Black Wednesday really. Firstly, when we were forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism after a market turmoil that began in northern Europe, not with us, and injudicious remarks by the governor of the Bundesbank led them to concentrate on sterling, which was very unhelpful indeed.

    When we were forced out of the Exchange Rate Mechanism, I was already in discussion with the policy unit about how we could leave it, because its purpose had been to bring down inflation, and it had done that. Many people hated the ERM because they thought it was a stepping stone to the euro and that we were going to join the single currency. That was never going to happen while I was there. I wasn’t going to join the single currency. We weren’t ready for it. Parliament wouldn’t have accepted it and I didn’t like it anyway.

    We went into the Exchange Rate Mechanism because we had failed to get inflation down with every other policy. We and our predecessors, in Margaret’s time, in Ted’s time, in Jim Callaghan’s time, in Harold Wilson’s time, had seen inflation come back again and again and destroy parties. I was determined that we would stick with the ERM until we had beaten inflation. And we did. We enjoyed the benefit of that right up to about 2010. So the incoming Labour government inherited a low-inflationary position and a very good economy in 1997.

    But because we had fallen out of the ERM, that masked the changes in the economy and the changes in interest rates. We got none of the credit a government would normally have got for that simply because we were thought to have been incompetent because we were forced out of the ERM.

    Matt Chorley: So it was a political impact rather than an economic catastrophe?

    Sir John Major: It was a political catastrophe, but it wasn’t an economic catastrophe. The economy could then sustain leaving the ERM. The difficulty was how to get out without the markets thinking you were weakening the anti-inflationary policy. That was the difficulty that we didn’t solve. So when we were thrown out, it was catastrophic politically, but it had done its job.

    I felt so strongly about inflation, and I will put it in this personal way because it is how I felt. When we were living in those two rooms, there was barely a week when the money did not run out before the week. I saw my mother go downstairs and borrow money to see us through the week, then desperately try and find some way to pay it back, then repeat the exercise week after week after week. I knew what that was like, and I knew that was what inflation did not just to my family but to families all over the country. I hated inflation with a passion, and I would rather have been forced out of government and out of politics than have given up on the anti-inflationary programme. That was the ERM.

    The other point I would make about it is that with all my critics, I remember even the Daily Telegraph had banner headlines saying “At last we’re going to have some economic discipline” on the day I went in. It is amazing how successes have many fathers and failures are orphans.

    Matt Chorley: Can I ask you about Spitting Image? Did you watch Spitting Image? We had various questions sent in from people asking about you being portrayed as the grey man of politics, despite having the background you came from, winning a general election and beating older politicians.

    Sir John Major: Politics is a rough old trade. That was originally a joke across the tea room by a friend of mine when my hair started to go grey when I was about 48. That is where it came from. It was a very useful way to portray something quite different and it was used mercilessly, because politics is sometimes a rather fierce trade. But you know that when you go into it. There’s no point crying over it.

    Matt Chorley: Did you watch it at the time?

    Sir John Major: I stopped watching it when I saw the portrayals of Norman Tebbit and Margaret Thatcher, which I thought were downright crude. So I did watch it occasionally, but when I began to feature in it in an indelicate way, I thought the same people who told me I ought not to read the newspapers now said, “Why didn’t you watch Spitting Image?”

    Matt Chorley: Do you watch any political TV shows? The Thick of It, Yes Minister, or was it all a bit too much like work?

    Sir John Major: The only one I watched was Yes Minister, which I thought was pure genius. It got so close to a parody of reality. I didn’t think The Thick of It quite achieved that. I didn’t watch that very much.

    Matt Chorley: Can I ask you about the job of being Prime Minister and how you approached it? Since you were there, we have had seven or eight Prime Ministers. Is it getting harder?

    Sir John Major: In some ways, yes. It is certainly getting harder because of the external pressure of social media. That is undoubtedly getting harder. On the other hand, newspapers matter less than they did politically. They are not as powerful as they were in the 70s, 80s and 90s.

    The problems are wider today, and there seems to be a shorter time frame in which people feel they can deal with problems and push them aside. Most of the big problems we have in this country at the moment are long-term problems. How are we going to cope with an ever-increasing number of elderly people who will live longer and need more medicine and more expensive medicine? How are we going to prepare for that? How are we going to prepare for people having their own pensions when the Government keeps producing measures that will reduce the private pensions that people actually earn and save for in their own lifetime? They are forcing more people into state assistance when they retire by the policies they are following now. That is not only wrong, it is plain stupid.

    Then there are other things like climate change. Some people deny climate change. I don’t know what planet they are living on. When they say, “I don’t believe in climate change”, it’s a cop-out. It means they needn’t put the money towards the policy and they can spend it on something else that is more politically popular. But I only have to look at my own garden. The daffodils come up six weeks earlier. The climate is different. The ice caps are not in my garden, by the way, but the ice caps are melting and changing the positions inside the oceans. There are more hurricanes. There are much more extreme weather events. The climate is changing.

    Those people who say, “Let’s push it back a bit. Let’s not do anything. Let’s do it a little more slowly so we can spend a little money on something else” are saying to my children, your children and their grandchildren, “Tough luck, chaps. We’re not only leaving you a difficult economy with too many old people that you can’t afford to care for. We’re going to leave you with climate change that we should have put right for you and didn’t.”

    The first role of any government, in my view, is to leave something better for the next generation than your generation inherited. This is not done now. The youngsters of today are inheriting a more difficult world and a less favourable world than my generation, and their successors may be in exactly the same position unless we now begin to take seriously those very long-term problems.

    I’m sorry that’s a long, tedious answer, but I feel very strongly that it demeans politics. You are not there as a politician as if it is a game show. You are not there just to provide fodder for the media and project your own career. You are there to deal with problems that ordinary people elect you to deal with. We are a representative democracy. We send representatives to Parliament to make sure our lives are better. If you ignore and deny those issues, our lives will not get better and those Parliaments will have failed.

    Matt Chorley: Some of those issues you are talking about, changes to pensions and so on, are unfolding under the Labour Government. But some of the things, climate change and net zero, those are ideas which are taking hold in the Conservative Party as well.

    Sir John Major: I am not making a point against any one government. It has been going on for quite a long time. Let me put it to you in this one question. You know politics better than most people, I would guess. When did you last hear a senior politician deliver a detailed lecture about the problems we face and what we must do to make those problems better over the next 30 years? Can you remember such a speech?

    Matt Chorley: Not off the top of my head.

    Sir John Major: No, neither can I. Don’t you think the people out there would actually like to hear someone standing up and saying: “We’ve got these things wrong. We’ve really screwed up. We’ve really got to take this particular policy more seriously. We cannot cope with population growth and the growth in the length of years people live, and the more expensive medical treatments. We cannot cope with it unless we begin to take action on those things. At this moment, we cannot delay on that.”

    Matt Chorley: So what is the problem? Is it the quality of the politicians? Is it the quality of MPs in Parliament who get restless too quickly? Is it partly our fault, the electorate’s fault, that we are impatient and we want quick and easy answers to big complicated problems?

    Sir John Major: I’m afraid we do. That is because nobody is telling us we can’t have that. Instead of saying, “These are the difficulties we’ve got to face and you can’t have that,” nobody is doing that. Too many people listen to focus groups and parody the focus groups in their policies, which naturally means more expenditure, and that inevitably, in the short term or the longer term, means either more debt or higher taxes. Governments have lost the capacity, it seems, to say no. Part of the job of politics is to say no.

    Matt Chorley: I suppose the counterargument is that if you say no, you lose elections and you are not in a position of power any more.

    Sir John Major: I’m not entirely sure that is the case. I would guess there are millions of people out there who would be only too pleased to hear a politician stand up and set out absolutely clearly, honestly and unmistakably the depth of the problems we face and the sort of measures we are going to have to take in order to protect ourselves.

    They say, “You can’t do that. You’ll lose votes.” Really? When you are setting out a policy that will ease the lives of their children and grandchildren? Are we so self-centred that we can’t take in that message? I don’t believe it.

    Matt Chorley: I wonder, we have touched a bit on social media, but the role of social media in changing the way people consume the news, instead of watching the six o’clock news or reading a newspaper which might have a broad range of issues and voices. If you are just watching people you agree with, that reinforces the idea that this person has all the answers.

    Sir John Major: Yes. I’m afraid there has been a lot of that over a long time, where people mix with other people who have the same views and read newspapers that echo their views, or indeed shape their views. This is happening in a much bigger way in America, I may say, but it is certainly happening here as well. It is very dangerous. You can’t debate and change the world unless you meet the people with whom you disagree and try to persuade them. If, instead of that, you avoid the people you disagree with and form your own clique with your own views, then nothing is going to change in terms of really addressing the problems that lie before us.

    Matt Chorley: You have talked in the past about believing in a rough and ready decency. Do you think we see enough of that in our politics today?

    Sir John Major: Sometimes you do.

    Matt Chorley: Is it more rough than it is decent?

    Sir John Major: There are a lot of very decent people in politics. I don’t know the present Parliament as well as earlier Parliaments. I’m not a member of the present Parliament, but I know a number of MPs from the Conservative Party and Labour Party, not so much the Liberal Democrats these days. There are lots of them who have very decent instincts. The curious thing is that many of their instincts as to what they would like to achieve are the same. What they differ about is how to achieve it.

    The economy is a practical example. The Conservative Party would say we have to deal with it with much more free enterprise and much less regulation. Many people in the Labour Party would also want a much better economy but would go a completely different way: more state direction. Everyone can have their own view on that. But the interesting thing is that the objectives are the same.

    The very nature of the House of Commons, with His Majesty’s Opposition being two sword lengths apart from His Majesty’s Government, actually promotes the idea that the opposition must oppose everything. I’m not sure that I agree with that. I think the opposition has a duty to point out shortcomings. But when the objectives are the same, I think it would be better if people acknowledged similar objectives and began more practically to suggest mutual ways of meeting those objectives.

    The classic example I would give you is that I do not think we will get a proper concordat on health, probably the single most important issue to many people, until the main parties agree the broad parameters of it, and that includes funding. I think that is something they ought to be looking at. We can’t have one party coming into government, setting out a series of policies, making changes, and the other party denying them, then, because they have denounced them, coming in and feeling they have to change them. That is poor politics.

    Matt Chorley: And yet, when we look at how politics has unfolded over the last few years, promises do not get very long, whether it is their own MPs or the media.

    Sir John Major: Maybe these long-term problems would. In any event, the fate of individual politicians doesn’t really matter as much as the development of the right policy. It isn’t a good idea to keep changing Prime Ministers. I think there is also a limit. If I give you a term of years, it will undoubtedly cause trouble, but I think it is an idea to have a limited number of years. The Americans have two terms of a president and then stop.

    Matt Chorley: We can’t get to two years at the moment before speculation.

    Sir John Major: I know, but this is a phase we are going through. It is partly a function of the many, many difficulties that we face at the moment.

    Matt Chorley: Is the frustration that people don’t believe those problems show signs of being solved?

    Sir John Major: The best aphrodisiac in politics is hope. If people can see a change, there is a change in atmosphere. It doesn’t even have to be politics. If we win the Ashes or the World Cup, there is a total change in atmosphere in the country. If you see interest rates going down rather than up, there is a total change in people’s capacity to invest and their belief in what is going to happen in the future. The moment the economy turns, politics will turn too.

    Matt Chorley: It sounds as if, if Keir picked up the phone to you, I don’t know if he ever does, your advice would be the old Churchillian phrase, “Keep buggering on.”

    Sir John Major: I’m not going to offer advice. I have been in politics a long time and I have made many mistakes. One mistake I’m not going to make is advising a Labour Prime Minister in public. And no, I have not been asked to advise a Labour Prime Minister in private either.

    Matt Chorley: You talked about Her Majesty’s Opposition. Obviously now it is His Majesty’s Opposition. When you were there it was the Queen. Tell me about the weekly audience. I have heard other Prime Ministers talk about how it is the one meeting you go into where the other person doesn’t want your job. How important was it for you, having that regular audience?

    Sir John Major: It was very important. I don’t mean for me. I think the Prime Minister meeting the monarch weekly is very important for the monarch too. I have no intention of telling you the sort of things we discussed. I will tell you it wasn’t all politics by any means. The only others present at those meetings ever were the corgis. If someone had bugged the corgis, it would have been quite a revelation.

    Matt Chorley: Are you a fan of dogs?

    Sir John Major: Oh yes.

    Matt Chorley: You got on with the corgis?

    Sir John Major: Yes, the corgis were fine. We even have an office therapy dog.

    Matt Chorley:  Do you?

    Sir John Major: No, it’s not my dog. It’s my chief of staff’s dog.

    Matt Chorley: Oh, great. What sort of dog is it?

    Sir John Major: I’m not going to go into the dog. I don’t want the dog to become famous.

    Matt Chorley: When you were Prime Minister, it was quite a turbulent time for the royals. We have since had Cabinet papers released from when the Queen went through her annus horribilis. Did you feel that the royals were really under pressure at that moment? And did you feel that you helped turn things around?

    Sir John Major: I have no intention of commenting on that, except to say I did share an annus horribilis with the Queen at the same time, so we had plenty to talk about.

    Matt Chorley: You talked about how you had a small majority after 1992 and obviously that made your life hard. Is there a sweet spot for the size of a majority? Is there a point where having a massive majority is also a problem?

    Sir John Major: Something between 40 and 50 is the sweet spot. One of the problems the Labour Party has at the moment is that they have such a big majority. A large number of people know in their hearts that they are a one-term Member of Parliament for that particular constituency. Unless they defy political gravity, they will lose at the next election. That will encourage many of them not to take difficult decisions, but to cry out against difficult decisions so they can be seen to be defending their constituents against something that may be necessary but is unpopular. That makes any government’s job much harder.

    Matt Chorley: I just want to end on a couple of reflections. Any regrets? Your biggest regret from your time as Prime Minister?

    Sir John Major: Have you an hour or two? There were lots. I won’t say it is the biggest, but a big regret I have is that when I negotiated the Maastricht Treaty, it was hugely well received in Parliament. We didn’t put the Bill for the Maastricht Treaty through Parliament before the 1992 election because it had such support. There were five or six hundred Members of Parliament voting for it. We didn’t put it through. We put through other measures that were more immediately relevant, and so we left the Maastricht Treaty until after the 1992 election.

    As I explained earlier, after the 1992 election, the complexion of the Tory Party had changed remarkably. Without that, we would not have had all the troubles we had with the Maastricht Treaty, which had a great deal to do with the eternal damnation of the Conservative Government at the time. So that is a regret. I could have got it through.

    Matt Chorley: And that might have changed what followed afterwards.

    Sir John Major: Yes. There wouldn’t have been a Bill that they could spend a whole year attacking.

    Matt Chorley: On the positive side, George, who is a listener, got in touch and said, “Does Sir John feel he did not get enough credit for the National Lottery, lottery-funded elite sports and Team GB’s success at the Olympics? Please thank him from me.”

    Sir John Major: I’m very pleased it has done so well. I’ll tell you how I came about doing it. I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury in 1987 to 1989, and the Chief Secretary negotiated public expenditure with every individual minister. So he had, although he was a junior member of the Cabinet, more power than most members because he could redirect money.

    I noticed in doing that that the things the public most cared about, sport and the arts, got petty cash from the Government. I could never see a circumstance in which you could take money away from health or education or defence or social security in order to enhance leisure. Governments have never been big on leisure, if you go back as far in history as you like. So I was looking for some external way of funding something that the public really loved, sport and the arts. The answer was the lottery.

    Since then, I don’t know if you know how much it has given apart from prizes. How much do you think it has delivered to the public in good causes?

    Matt Chorley: In good causes? It must be billions.

    Sir John Major: Have a rough guess.

    Matt Chorley: Three billion?

    Sir John Major: £50 billion. And that was 18 months ago, so it will be £51 billion, rising to £52 billion now. You can go to almost every village in the country and you’ll find something badged with National Lottery money. If you see that badge, you think, “I did that.” Well, it wasn’t only me. Lots of other people were there. One takes personal blame and one takes personal credit, but neither of those things is fully justified. You shouldn’t entirely get the blame or entirely receive the credit. But I am very pleased it went well.

    Matt Chorley: A final thought, then, going back to where we began. The young 13-year-old John not working that hard at school, difficulty at home, parents distracted by trying to make ends meet. If that young John now were to come across our conversation and had an interest in politics, what would you say to him?

    Sir John Major: I would say to young people, we need you in politics. If all the talent in this country concentrates on “How can I earn more money?” and “How can I avoid public service like the plague because I don’t like the idea of it?”, then we are in deep doo-dah.

    We do need people to go into politics and we need our best people to go into politics. That may mean some changes in the way in which Parliament works. It will certainly require a change in attitude where public service, whether it is elected public service in the House of Commons, appointed public service in the Civil Service or any of the government bodies, particularly local government, is attractive. We need that sort of career to be attractive and to be socially attractive as well as financially attractive. I am not suggesting one is more important than the other. We need both. When you have respect for those, I think we will be getting back into a much more healthy position. It is very silly to argue and denigrate public service. People simply shouldn’t do it.

    Sir John Major, it has been fascinating to talk to you. Thank you for your time.

    Sir John Major: My pleasure. Thank you.

  • Sir John Major’s Speech on 25th Anniversary of Camelot – 4 July 2019

    Below is the text of the speech made by Sir John Major on the occasion of the 25th anniversary of Camelot. The speech was made at Somerset House in London on Thursday 4 July 2019.

    It’s a real pleasure to be here at Somerset House to celebrate this Anniversary.

    Twenty five years ago the Lottery had a difficult birth, with many critics. But we can now see that it has changed the face of our country.

    Wherever you travel, the Lottery has left its mark.

    An Arts Centre, here – a new sports complex there. Churches restored. Village halls built or repaired. New playgrounds for children.

    Restored parks and open spaces. New cycle ways. New instruments for local bands and orchestras. Theatre groups. Community groups providing care and support for those most in need ….. I could easily go on ……

    It has also revolutionised sport: athletics, rowing, gymnastics, hockey, cricket, football – indeed all sports – and brought the four nations of the UK success on a scale we could not otherwise have achieved.

    All in all, hundreds and thousands of projects – in every corner of our land – some very big, but most quite small, and covering every sort of good cause, have all enriched the lives of the “little platoons” that are the bedrock of our society.

    So thank you, Lottery – and thank you, Camelot for your stewardship of it.

    The Lottery began – as all good stories do – a long time ago. At the time, I was Chief Secretary to the Treasury and responsible for deciding who got public money – and how much.

    Sport and the Arts have always been passions for me. I treasured our heritage, and admired the work of charities. But, as Chief Secretary, I saw that – however important all these things are to our quality of life – they only ever got peanuts from every Government. Quite simply, they could never compete with the demands of health, education or defence.

    But they were still important – especially so to those who could not pay for their entertainment – and so I looked for a pot of gold, “free” of Government interference, that came voluntarily from the taxpayer.

    The pot of gold I found was the Lottery.

    And, since the money came from the public, I believed it should only be for the public – and not for any Government to spend.

    I remember the launch day very well: the press turned out en masse to witness my buying £5-worth of tickets from Victoria Station. I then lived a nightmare knowing that if I won the jackpot, I would have to give the money back.

    I, myself, was fully reconciled to this, but as – at the time – I had a mortgage and no savings, I wasn’t quite sure how that would have gone down with my family.

    Fortunately, fate was kind: I won nothing – and a frosty reaction from my family was averted.

    I always will care very much about the Lottery. I am enormously proud of what it has achieved so far and – as Hugh Robinson noted a few moments ago – the fact that it has now distributed £40 billion to good causes is truly phenomenal. As I look ahead, I wish it to continue to do so.

    But there is a growing problem that I hope Government will address. The National Lottery was designed to be a monopoly for the people, hence the “National” in its title – but is now in danger of being undermined by the changing nature of umbrella society lotteries.

    The success of small local society lotteries and the National Lottery has been based on a clear distinction that allowed both to co-exist. And that is fine.

    However – having seen the success of the National Lottery – a small number of these are now emerging on an industrial scale, and have positioned themselves as national competitors to the National Lottery.

    It was precisely to avoid this sort of problem that, when the Lottery was first introduced, Parliament legislated that it would be a monopoly.

    The continued growth of umbrella society lotteries will draw money away from the National Lottery, and thus away from good causes. If that continues, and grows, the loss to local communities and civic amenities will be immense.

    However, tonight we are here to applaud and celebrate the outstanding achievements of the National Lottery.

    At 25, it is in its prime, and I wish it every possible good fortune for the next 25 years – and beyond – as it matures into a venerable and much respected old age: a true national treasure.

  • Sir John Major’s Article on the National Lottery – 24 August 2008

    The text of Sir John Major’s article on the National Lottery, published by the Sunday Telegraph on 24th August 2008.

    SIR JOHN MAJOR:

    One would need a heart of stone not to have enjoyed the wonderful British triumphs at the Beijing Olympics. Day after day, young British athletes have surpassed themselves and the whole country has been uplifted by their performances. As we celebrate the most successful modern Olympics we have known, we can marvel at the dedication of the athletes who have sacrificed so much in pursuit of their dreams.

    But such commitment needs support. Athletes need gymnasiums, swimming pools, velodromes and running tracks upon which to hone their skills, and the Lottery has helped pay for them: talent is the first ingredient for Gold, but the best coaching and facilities are indispensable.

    Of course, the purpose of the Lottery is much wider than support for our sporting elite – important though that is. The genesis of the Lottery lay in my belief that sport, the arts, our heritage and charities enhance the quality of life for millions of people – and I noted at the Treasury that, in the scramble for taxpayer funding, they always lose out to Health, Education, Social Services and Defence. As Prime Minister, my solution was the Lottery: additional funding, free of Government interference, to provide resources to replace dilapidated facilities, repair decaying buildings, and boost the arts and charities.

    And it has done so. Since its launch in 1994, over £21 billion has been distributed to over 300,000 local projects, as well as to the many mega-schemes of national importance. Without the Lottery there may have been no new Wembley Stadium, no National Cycle network, no velodrome in Manchester, no Eden Project in Cornwall, no renovation of the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Nor would there have been new village and community halls, bowling greens, cricket nets, arts clubs and so much more in towns and villages in every corner of our country. Over the past fourteen years, the Lottery has been the essential ingredient in the greatest enhancement of cultural and sporting life in Britain over the last century.

    But it is more than that. The provision of grassroots facilities for sport and the arts offers lasting social benefits. Where would we prefer our young people to be – in clubs or gymnasiums or on street corners? Members of teams or gangs? Given worries about obesity – do we wish them to be fit or fat? And – for the more mature in our society – do we approve or disapprove of increased social and sporting facilities, such as bowls? Such questions have easy answers.

    Lottery funding has also benefited our heritage and the arts, with repair and renovation to churches and ancient buildings, and encouragement of artistic talent.

    And, at the top level of sport, we love to win. Our national characteristics may enable us to accept defeat with good humour, but we cherish success.

    Success uplifts our nation: witness the impact of the Olympics, or the 2005 Ashes win or, sadly long ago, the 1966 World Cup win. We will enjoy more such triumphs only if we develop the grassroots of sport. And we love to celebrate our icons. The success of Freddie Flintoff or Chris Hoy or Rebecca Adlington, or the talents of Kenneth Branagh or Judi Dench, are more exciting to us than the activities of politicians or businessmen. If we nurture grassroots talent, a new generation of icons will surely follow.

    The Lottery is more than a cash dispenser: it is a social tool and the present Government has a mixed record in caring for it. To their credit, they have widened the use of Lottery funds – as I would have done myself. To their discredit, they have siphoned off funds for their own pet projects. In 1997, one-fifth of Lottery proceeds went to each of the long-term good causes. In 1998, the Government cut that to 16.6%, and later the Big Lottery Fund dipped into the bran tub yet again – and sport, the arts, heritage and charities were the losers.

    It is not easy to disentangle by how much the four main good causes have lost out, but it is literally billions over the last decade. At present, I calculate annual funding has dropped by about one-third from its peak.

    Additionally – although once more the figures are unclear – grassroot schemes have lost about a further half a billion pounds to fund Olympic infrastructure. A contribution – as with the Commonwealth Games at Manchester – is acceptable but half a billion is far too high a loss for grassroots sport. This reduction is in direct contravention of the promise which helped London win the Olympic bid: “To capture the imagination of young people and leave a lasting legacy”.

    What of the future? I would like to see Lottery proceeds returned in full to their original purpose so that sport, the arts, heritage and charities would each receive 20%. The final 20% could be ring-fenced to re-introduce sport into the State sector of education – a plan I would have implemented had I won the 1997 Election. The opportunity to enjoy sport – and to excel at it – must be as great in State Schools as in Private Schools: we need to unearth and develop that talent. I shall forever regret that I did not ensure that provision was put in place when I was in a position to do so.

    I should also like the distributing bodies to set out their objectives for the next decade – and be prepared to stage funding over many years. Where appropriate, I would hope objectives could be agreed with Government, so that taxpayer and Lottery funding could work in harmony. If Lottery largesse is to continue at a high level, prizes must remain attractive even though they are often controversial. I am not personally offended by instant wealth – nor, I believe, are the 70% of the public who play the Lottery each week.

    Over time, Lottery proceeds can further advance the renaissance of British sport and the arts; widen leisure for every age group; improve services for the disadvantaged; and repair our ancient buildings for future generations to enjoy.

    My hope is that, with the help of Lottery funding, our 2012 Olympians may be able to build on success in Beijing, to win an even greater haul of medals on their own home soil.

    I, for one, will be cheering them on.

  • Sir John Major’s Statement on the National Lottery – 30 July 2006

    The text of Sir John Major’s statement on the National Lottery, made to the Sunday Telegraph on 30th July 2006.

    SIR JOHN MAJOR:

    My original vision for the Lottery was to fund a renaissance in sport, the arts and our heritage. I saw the opportunity to fund projects that the Treasury would never be able to afford.

    In ten years much has been achieved, but far more could have been done if the Labour Government had not perverted the original aim of the Lottery by diverting billions of pounds from each good cause for their own purpose. It has been larceny on a grand scale.

    I am absolutely delighted that a future Conservative Government will restore the Lottery to its original purpose. We will all be the richer for that.

  • Sir John Major’s Comments on the National Lottery – 1 May 2005

    The text of Sir John Major’s comments on the National Lottery which were published in The Observer on 1st May 2005.

    SIR JOHN MAJOR:

    I established the Lottery because I believed that sport, the arts, and our national heritage would never be able to compete with health and education to attract taxpayers’ funds, and therefore lost out.

    From the outset, I believed the money raised by the Lottery had to be additional to existing funding and not a substitute for it. At the time, the Labour Opposition shared that view, yet in Government, they have ransacked the Lottery time and again.

    My hope was to upgrade our national infrastructure and encourage active involvement in sport and the arts, as well as promote a greater appreciation of our national heritage. I have always believed that the social and health aspects of sport in particular are vitally important. I wanted our children to be fit not fat, team players not home-aloners.

    Over the last decade, the Lottery has transformed the arts and sport at national and grassroots level but it is a tragedy that this Labour Government use it simply as a bran tub into which they can dip their sticky fingers whenever they need additional money for what – historically – has been funded by the Treasury. Their behaviour is a complete betrayal of their own promises when the Bill passed through Parliament. And a complete betrayal of the very principle by which the Lottery was formed.

    29 April 2005

  • Mr Major’s Comments on the National Lottery – 22 October 2004

    The text of Mr Major’s comments on the National Lottery which were published on 22nd October 2004.

    QUESTION:

    Are you concerned that the “additionality” criterion of the Lottery has fallen by the wayside. In other words, the Lottery was set up to do what Government does not provide for?

    JOHN MAJOR:

    Sport, Arts and Heritage play a vital part in the daily lives of most people and yet can never compete with the demands of health, education and defence for Government funds. I established the Lottery to provide the good causes with large sums of money with the express will of Parliament that this funding would be in addition to whatever sums the Government themselves had been able to allocate. This “additionality” criteria was fundamental to the establishment of the Lottery, yet has been seriously undermined by the present Government.

    Since 1997, the Labour Government has increasingly ignored the additionality principle. First, by cutting back on even minimum levels of support; and second, by raiding the Lottery Fund for programmes that historically have been met out of central taxation. Overall, their behaviour has amounted to nothing short of grand larceny.

    QUESTION:

    Do you worry that 50% of the Lottery will now go to health, education and environment, which are areas that Government traditionally pays for?

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I am concerned that a huge amount of Lottery funding is now being used for purposes for which Parliament did not vote in the original Lottery Bill, and which at the time was felt to be inappropriate by both the Conservative Government and Labour Opposition. Although for the purposes of accuracy, I understand that somewhere between 70% and 75% of lottery revenue still goes to the original Good Causes, because the Big Lottery Fund uses half of its budget – about 25% of all lottery revenue – to fund charities and the voluntary sector, the remit of the former Community Fund.

    QUESTION:

    Have the original good causes been cast aside?

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I do not believe the original Good Causes have been entirely cast aside – after all, they still receive around 75% of all lottery revenues. But they have been very badly treated and given the Government’s dismal record thus far, there must be concern about the future.

    The Lottery is now being used blatantly for substitute funding and this is wholly unacceptable.

    QUESTION:

    Is the setting-up of the Lottery one of your proudest achievements?

    JOHN MAJOR:

    I am very proud to have established the Lottery as I believe it adds to the quality of life for many millions of people. However, when looking at the principal achievements of the previous Conservative Government, I would list the Lottery behind the establishment of the Northern Ireland Peace Process and the total sea-change in our economic prospects.

  • John Major’s Article on the National Lottery – 8 November 1999

    Below is the text of John Major’s article on the National Lottery, published in the New Statesman on 8th November 1999.

    JOHN MAJOR:
    The case for the National Lottery has always seemed so straightforward that it surprised me in government – and surprises me still – how many people have found grounds to oppose it. The Lottery is hardly an unusual institution. We’d had lotteries in the past – the British Museum was built out of the proceeds of a particularly successful one- and our national enthusiasm for the football pools, Premium Bonds and the 3.45 at Aintree was clear. Yet when I told the cabinet I favoured including a lottery in our manifesto for the 1992 election, I found a roomful of raised eyebrows and doubtful faces. At first only Chris Patten and the home secretary, Kenneth Baker, were enthusiastic.
    Some of the opposition to this innovation was unexceptionable. When the bill went though the Commons, MPs from Merseyside put up a doughty defence of the pools industry and complained about the threat the Lottery posed to it- the main pools company, of course, being based in Liverpool. In the Lords, bishops questioned the morality of the project and quoted biblical authority to support their case (though the Church of England has wisely used Lottery money to renovate churches around the country). Some Conservatives disliked the idea of state-sanctioned gambling full stop.
    None of this bothered me. What did was the unstated sentiment that lay behind so much other hostility to the scheme: hostility from the Labour and Liberal benches as well as from Tories. Many outspoken opponents actually minded not a jot whether there was a lottery – provided people like themselves were the only people to buy tickets. What turned them against it was their fear that Lottery sales would be greatest among people most in need of hope; and their assumption that people in need of hope could not be expected to grasp what was best for them. In short, they thought the poor needed protection from themselves.
    I knew from experience that this was paternalist nonsense and it made me all the keener to set up the Lottery. People don’t tend to bankrupt themselves, or pin all their hopes on false promises, or act against their own interests – though policymakers sometimes find it hard to believe. People don’t have to buy Lottery tickets. But I see no good reason why they shouldn’t be given the opportunity to do so.
    The other reason I was an enthusiastic supporter of the Lottery was more prosaic. I knew it was the only way we could fund a rebirth of cultural and sporting life in Britain. Government has always passed scraps to the arts at the end of the spending round, but never more than scraps. The Treasury’s thinking on the matter was drummed into me when I was chief secretary and later chancellor. The competing demands of health, education, pensions and defence would always come first. I knew there was no chance of funding the long-term development of sports and the arts from general government revenue. A lottery could do just that.
    It’s the reason I set up safeguards to protect Lottery money from Whitehall spending limits, and one reason I created a new department, with cabinet status, to oversee our national heritage. It has worked, too. In my autobiography, I claim that it is “the most successful innovation of any government for years”, and I don’t think that’s much of an exaggeration. Billions have been raised in the past five years, most of it going not to a handful of big-name projects but to countless small schemes up and down the country. As the millennium approaches, the fruits of this work are beginning to show: new museums, theatres, sports grounds, arts projects and much, much else have opened. There has been a revolution in leisure for a country that has always undervalued its free time.
    And five years is such a short time. My hopes for the Lottery were always longer term. As a cricket-lover I wanted to encourage the Peter Mays and the Ian Bothams of the future; in the arts I wanted to support new John Gielguds and Benjamin Brittens. Initially Lottery money went towards infrastructure projects. It was always my intention that some funds would begin to be used to subsidise the running costs of these new schemes. But from the start I insisted that Lottery money should be used for extra spending, on things that the taxpayer cannot be expected to cover.
    Under new Labour, the Treasury is beginning to ransack the Lottery. The Millennium Fund expires at the end of the year. The government plans to replace it with a New Opportunities Fund, cutting as it does so the percentage of Lottery money going to good causes. The new fund covers spending areas coaching in numeracy, literacy, science and technology which, although worthy in themselves, are mainstream government expenditure and should be funded by the taxpayer and not the Lottery. After the millennium, I had hoped to find funds from the Lottery to put sports teachers into schools. I want us to win the World Cup, the Six Nations trophy, the Test matches, the Davis Cup. Rooting a love of sport and the arts in schools would have been the right thing to do. I do hope it might yet be possible. It won’t be unless the Treasury is kept at bay. Will Tony Blair and Chris Smith stand up to Gordon Brown?

  • Mr Major’s Contribution to the National Lottery Debate – 7 April 1998

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s contribution to the debate on the National Lottery held in the House of Commons on 7th April 1998.

    Mr. Tom Pendry (Stalybridge and Hyde) I am delighted to be called to take part in this important debate on what I consider to be one of the most important Bills that the Government have introduced in this packed Session of Parliament.
    I recall vividly during the passage of what was then the National Lottery etc. Bill some three years ago, when I led for the Opposition, pledging on behalf of my party full support for a national lottery, but expressing many doubts about the way in which the legislation had been drafted. Many people within the parliamentary Labour party also had reservations about that Bill. Nevertheless, we set about finding ways to improve it, and we were successful in obtaining several amendments.
    For example, we managed to give some kind of level playing field to the pools companies. I say “some kind” of level playing field because it certainly has not been a true level playing field to date, and the pools companies have been hit enormously hard by the national lottery. However, we did obtain for them the ability to roll over prize money, the legalisation of the sale of coupons in shops, and permission to be allowed to sponsor television and radio programmes. Nevertheless, the pools have been significantly affected by the lottery. For example, in 1994, the pools companies paid £350 million in betting duty, but the figure has shrunk to £131 million today.
    We also sought and achieved concessions to enable small charities and the lottery to compete, by raising the limit on the size of small lotteries to £1 million, and to prevent the national lottery from selling door to door in order to protect public collections. We also sought certain social safeguards. Whereas we wanted the sale of lottery tickets to be restricted to 18-year-olds and above, in line with the restriction for the pools companies, the then Government brought down the age to 16 in both cases – that was some kind of level playing field, but not the kind that we sought. I could go on about the improvements that we made to the National Lottery etc. Bill, but we did not stop there.
    In 1995, my right hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), the then shadow Secretary of State for National Heritage, set up an advisory committee on which I served along with representatives of business, local government, Churches and charities. Its remit was to examine the lottery and suggest ways to improve the running of it. We consulted, we shared ideas, and we listened; we then published the best ideas in a paper entitled “The National Lottery Initiatives and Recommendations”.
    I remind the House of some of the recommendations. They included the creation of new beneficiaries from lottery money, more flexible distribution, the development of a strategic approach to distributors, fast tracking for small grants, giving access to children’s play, and introducing a national endowment scheme, all of which have been included in this Bill, which tells me that the Government are listening to those who are making constructive suggestions.
    At the same time, however, I want to put on record a few issues that I trust the Government, in the spirit of openness that they have shown so far, will deal with as the Bill progresses through the House. I have only 10 minutes in which to speak, so I shall confine my remarks to one issue alone – sport and the lottery.
    My major concern is quite simply that the Bill represents a watering down of Labour’s previous commitment to sport. Although sport has been one of the great beneficiaries, and sport’s governing bodies have always placed on record their strong support for sport being one of the good causes, I trust that it will remain a permanent good cause after 2001. I am disappointed that the Government have not made such a firm commitment in the Bill.
    All I ask is that we adhere to our promise in the manifesto, which I launched with numerous sports stars during the general election. It states:
    “Sport will continue to be a permanent good cause for the purpose of Lottery Funding”. All I ask is that when he replies, the Minister for Sport spells that out once and for all.
    I welcome the New Opportunities Fund, because it addresses the Government’s and the people’s priorities, but I hope that the Government will recognise that sport and recreation are very much a people’s priority. It is estimated that each week more than 22 million adults and 7 million children participate in sporting activity – that is almost 60 per cent. of the total population. However, I heard what the Secretary of State said today, and I am sure that his words address that point. I want to see those figures increased.
    One of my top priorities was to promote sporting opportunities for all areas. Access was the watchword. I am glad that the Government have got off to a pretty good start by accepting some proposals, such as that to protect some playing fields. However, there is more to be done in that connection – for example, I believe that the playing fields of colleges of further education should be included. However, I must chide the Government for removing sport from the list of compulsory subjects on the national curriculum without even consulting the interested sporting groups. That has to be rectified.
    I hope that the New Opportunities Fund will not neglect the impact that sport can make on the twin priorities of health and education. Academic success is enhanced through physical education. A recent study concluded:
    Students who are involved in sport tend to perform as well, or better, academically than less active students, even though academic curriculum time is reduced. I am especially concerned that no urban primary school has yet received sports lottery money. In total, just eight such schools have received that money, but all have been in leafy shire districts – none in deprived urban areas.
    I should like to make another practical suggestion to improve sports funding. In our sports manifesto “Labour’s Sporting Nation”, we promised that the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts would offer support for sportspeople. Page 10 of that document states:
    The endowment will not focus solely on excellence, it will be inclusive in its approach, encouraging access and partnership across the whole range of earth sciences, humanities, sports and arts. I am highly disappointed therefore that that commitment to sport, which I personally wrote into that document, is being dropped by the Government. If they are intent on doing that, I have a suggestion as to how they can assist sport through NESTA in another way.
    If the Government are determined to exclude the development of sporting talent from NESTA’s remit because of the Sports Council’s involvement with existing sports organisations, using lottery funding for such development, I suggest that the Secretary of State can nevertheless find a useful and worthwhile sporting role within NESTA’s remit – it can ensure the development of sports science, which is crucial for the enhancement of world-class sport within the United Kingdom sports institute network. It could also play a key role in the development of sports information technology, providing coaching and advice on nutrition and medicine for our potential world-class performers and, indeed, for our schools.
    I mentioned the impact of the lottery on the football pools, and at this point I should like to declare an interest. As the House may know, I have recently been appointed chairman of the Football Trust. In the run-up to the general election, the trust campaigned to secure national lottery distributor status. Having lost some 60 per cent. of its annual income as a result of the lottery, that represented the most straightforward way of ensuring that the trust could continue its essential work for football throughout the United Kingdom.
    Labour’s proposal for the development of sport in “Labour’s Sporting Nation” included the following commitment:
    “We’ll make the Football Trust the recipient of Lottery money so it may continue its essential work for football at all levels throughout the United Kingdom”. Once in government, rather than extend distributor status, Labour decided that it would be appropriate for the trust to form partnerships with the Sports Councils in order to have access to lottery funding. I am pleased to be able to tell the House that in England the Sports Council and the football authorities have shown a great willingness to enter into partnership. As a result, the trust is able to continue to help the game at all levels in England.
    We are also, we hope, in the last stages of putting together a successful partnership in Scotland, and I have opened discussions with the Sports Councils and the football authorities in Wales and Northern Ireland. It is essential that those also result in the formation of successful partnerships.
    The trust’s contribution to the game throughout the United Kingdom is vital. It has a huge part to play in maintaining football’s place in the community. We are not only about bricks and mortar, but can handle grant-aid programmes of every sort, including revenue grants for community involvement and player development. If we are to continue our important work, the Sports Councils must play their part, which means that they in turn must continue to receive the resources to enable them to do so. The creation of the six good causes is to be welcomed, but we must ensure that sport continues to benefit from lottery funding to the appropriate degree and that the Sports Councils channel football’s fair share of it through the Football Trust.
    I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will not think that I have been anything other than constructive, because I welcome the Bill and certainly give it two cheers. I trust that the Government will listen to what I have said and, more particularly, to what sports bodies on the ground have said, and recognise the strength of their case. I hope to come back to the House in a few months’ time and give the Bill three good cheers.
    Mr. John Major (Huntingdon) I think that it is common ground among hon. Members on both sides of the House that the lottery has been a stunning success over the past few years. The very fact that the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport is introducing a Bill that re-regulates the lottery in some fashion and that makes other changes shows the extent to which it has become a national institution in a short time.
    Let me say at the outset: I am not opposed to any changes to the original Bill that was presented a few years ago. The situation is evolving. It was an evolutionary scheme. It was expected to evolve, and some of the Secretary of State’s changes, subject to more careful examination, I have no qualms about at all. It is sensible for him to look at new regulatory provision in the light of experience, and I am delighted that he has introduced measures for us to examine.
    The Secretary of State announced that consultation would take place on policy directives. We have not, of course, seen those directives yet, so I do not intend to give them blanket approval. If I heard him correctly, there is the prospect of moving rather more from capital funding to revenue funding, which was always envisaged at the outset and, again, is perfectly sensible. The only points at issue are the specific details of what is proposed and the timing. It is, I think, a natural evolution.
    The Secretary of State will forgive me if, having said that, I make the point that to issue more directives of this sort flatly contradicts what the Government said in opposition, when they remarked repeatedly and powerfully that decisions of this sort should be left to the distributing bodies. That was their position in opposition. They wanted the then Government to be at arm’s length from the money.
    I had much sympathy with that view and did not dispute it when the Opposition made it a particular cause of theirs during the passage of the first Bill, but we now know that what they meant was that they wanted the Conservative Government to be at arm’s length from the money, while the incoming Labour Government should get their sticky fingers on it, either by directives or directly, as speedily as they could. No wonder the Secretary of State had his tongue so far in his cheek during his speech. I was surprised from time to time that he did not choke.
    I shall refer to some of the background, and then I have a couple of specific questions to ask, which are pertinent to lottery fund distributors and beneficiaries. When we decided to establish the lottery, there was much opposition to it. I should like to explain briefly why I thought that it was the right thing to do; this Bill illustrates why we thought that it was important, although we oppose some tiny elements of the Bill.
    I believed, and still believe, that the arts, sport and the built heritage enhance the quality of life for everyone. They are part of a rounded life, yet the opportunity for everyone to enjoy them was clearly not there. Some people were more capable than others of viewing or taking part in sports and the arts.
    I was concerned to ensure that a child who lived in a tower block had the same opportunity in arts and sport as the child who was the heir to rolling acres. It was part, if I may return to an old phrase, of what I thought of as a classless society. That intention was always implicit in our Bill.
    We wanted to help small charities, particularly unfashionable small charities, which do tremendous work and have such dedicated supporters, but find it difficult to raise money. We also wanted to prepare for something that we shall never see again in our lifetime – the millennium – and ensure that it could be properly celebrated, as it should be. That is how the five good causes were born in the original Bill, which my right hon. Friend the Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mr. Brooke) piloted superbly through the House; my right hon. Friend the Member for South-West Surrey (Mrs. Bottomley) carried forward its ideas during her tenure as Secretary of State.
    Why those causes? Why those of all the other good causes, some of which every hon. Member could name? It was largely because they were under-resourced and would always be under-resourced by any Government. For any Government – Conservative, Labour or mishmash – the competing demands of health, education, pensions and defence will always come first, because that is where the pressure and the need have always traditionally been. The purpose of the lottery was to raise funds without taxation for those essential components of our national life. British talent in the arts is immense. Much of it is tapped; much of it is still untapped. The lottery is helping to tap it, and the British affection for sport is not doubted by anyone in the House.
    I believed that the lottery and the funding flow that would follow, were it to be successful – and it has been stunningly successful – would revolutionise both sport and the arts and preserve for future generations much of the built heritage that would otherwise disappear. That is what the lottery has achieved and will go on achieving if the flow of funds continues, as I expect that it will.
    For those reasons, the lottery was underpinned by two objectives: first, that resources should be additional to existing public expenditure; and, secondly, that other areas of expenditure – very important, but legitimate taxpayer-borne expenditure – should be specifically excluded. Despite what the Secretary of State has said, in some aspects – not all, but in some aspects – of the New Opportunities Fund, he has strayed across the line into new areas of funding.
    The argument about additionality is being conducted on the wrong basis. The point is: are the Government now using money for areas that are beyond the remit of the original five good causes? In one or two restricted areas, they are, and I shall try to set out later what those areas are.
    This new money – this lottery money – was never expected to be just for professional arts or professional sport; indeed, the contrary is true. Some of it was, of course, but it was mainly for schools, clubs and local arts groups. I am delighted that the vast majority of the awards have been made to local groups and have been for under £100,000, which is small in the context of Government expenditure, but massive in the context of what those small groups and clubs were doing to provide a cricket pitch, a swimming pool or a new arts club. Throughout the country, there was a revolution in facilities for people to enjoy, through either participation or watching.
    Lottery money was intended as capital provision in the first instance, for sound reasons that the House well understands. The aim was to build the facilities, but the implication was always there, that we would move beyond capital funding to revenue funding in due course. I thoroughly agreed with that, in certain cases with individual sponsorship as well. I have no objection to that in certain cases.
    No greater pleasure is given to people than when a great athlete or artist thrills the world with their particular abilities. I remember how the House practically came to a stop when Torvill and Dean mopped up, winning gold medals all over the place. I have no objection to individual sponsorship to produce more Torvills and more Deans and, if we could find a few fast bowlers as well, I should be even happier.
    The lottery has been a huge success throughout the country. Look, for example, at the Derby dance centre, the Cambridge Arts theatre, which I know extremely well, or the arts for everyone express scheme. Look – this lies within the responsibility of the Minister for Sport – at the national stadium or the UK sports institute. It is unthinkable that they could have been established without the lottery over recent years.
    Everyone in this debate wishes that to continue, but, for it to do so, two conditions are necessary: first, lottery funding should continue to be additional and, secondly, it should not be reduced and siphoned off to some other sector. The Secretary of State has re-endorsed the additionality principle. I shall not go through the debate between my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) and the Secretary of State and others. The Secretary of State has re-endorsed the additionality principle, and I welcome that. When he says it, I hope that the Treasury means it and will not come back to him later to change his mind directly, by pager or in any other fashion. I hope that he will stick to the additionality principle. If there are arguments to be had, they should be at the margins.
    A small part – or perhaps not so small; we do not yet know – of the New Opportunities Fund will use lottery money for what I envisaged would always be tax-based expenditure. I have no problems with some elements of the New Opportunities Fund, but expenditure on children’s play, coaching in literacy and numeracy and science and technology – all of which are worthy areas for expenditure – should properly be tax-borne.
    The lottery is substituting for what we all, including the Secretary of State, know should be tax-borne expenditure. That is a source of grievance to us and to the distributing bodies. Although they have had their hands twisted up their back to agree with what they know that the Government, with their tame majority, will do, they feel strongly that the money has been taken from them for other purposes. Those areas of expenditure are not, not, not in the original spirit of the lottery. They infringe the principles that Labour demanded of the previous Government when the original Bill went through the House. Demanding something in opposition and ignoring it in government is not the way to receive support and inspire confidence in those who are distributing lottery money.
    The Government are raiding the lottery, raising the fear that they will do it again – and possibly again and again. The danger of that is self-evident. One virtue of the lottery was that people could see continued funding that would enable the distributing authorities to think big, to think long and to be ambitious in their spread of spending over several years. The Bill and the New Opportunities Fund – I ask the Secretary of State to reflect on this and not to react immediately – have created uncertainty where there was confidence. I hope that the distributors have said that privately to the Secretary of State. They are saying it privately to us. They are uncertain where once they were certain. It is in the Secretary of State’s power to remove that uncertainty. I hope that he or the Minister for Sport, who will wind up the debate, will do so.
    Many of the fears of the distributing bodies and much of the controversy of the Bill would be removed by assurances on two questions, which I shall spell out for the Secretary of State. As a result of the New Opportunities Fund, the share of lottery funds for the other good causes will fall from 20 per cent. to 16.75 per cent. The Government have always said that that does not matter because the good causes will still receive the £1.8 billion each that was originally envisaged. The Government claim that they are merely redistributing the funds raised by the extra success of the lottery. It has raised £10 billion instead of £9 billion and the Government claim to be taking only the extra £1 billion.
    I shall not repeat the excellent arguments of my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham on that, but the Secretary of State must know that his argument is pure sophistry. It is spurious. When the 20 per cent. level was agreed, no one knew what the cash figure would be. The percentages were always at the heart of the proposals, because nobody knew what future revenue would be. Suppose that the economy begins to contract and the excellent growth rate that the Government were fortunate enough to inherit begins to slip away. That would have many effects on the economy, including a reduction in lottery resources, resulting in a smaller pot from which to distribute to the five good causes – now to be six. The reduced percentage would then really begin to bite and resentment would grow. The Secretary of State should reflect and instruct his colleague to remove that apprehension this evening.
    I do not think that the new estimate of £10 billion will be an underestimate. If more than £10 billion is raised, where will the extra go? Will it go to the original good causes, to the New Opportunities Fund or to both? That is highly relevant to the fears of the arts and sports distributors. The Government know that it is more than likely that the £10 billion estimate will be exceeded. The Minister for Sport nodded when I said that, so the Government are clearly aware of the issue and have considered it. They must know what they plan to do with any excess. I waited for the Secretary of State to tell us, but he did not mention the subject. I hope that he will have decided before the end of the debate. Who gets any money over – 10 billion and in what proportions?
    My second question is equally straightforward. The distributing bodies need security to plan ahead. That is not a wicked point from the previous Government, but one of the points that were implicit in the White Paper, “A People’s Lottery”. I hope that the Secretary of State will forgive me if I digress for a moment, but I hope that the Government will grow out of their silly sloganising. We have long known that any country that is called a democratic republic is notably undemocratic. Anything called the people’s something gives the people a good deal less say than they had before. We have a people’s lottery, a people’s money and cool Britannia.
    I am sure that the Secretary of State is ambitious – although I am not sure whether it is to be Prime Minister or mayor of London. Does he think that Mr. Attlee would have used such sloganising? I hope that he will decide that it is undignified and will drop it. It is not doing the country or the Government any good. When I hear Ministers producing such claptrap, I blush for them. When the Secretary of State came to the part of his speech about the people’s lottery, he buried his head in his script. I am short-sighted – an accusation that was also levelled at my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham – but I thought that even the Secretary of State’s ears went pink.
    Will the Government guarantee the percentage for the good causes beyond 2001 – for 10 years or some other period? If not, why not? The White Paper said that the distributing bodies needed to be able to take a long-term view and that they needed certainty. There is only one reason why the Secretary of State is not prepared to give that guarantee – the Treasury will not let him. The Treasury must be keeping open the option of a further smash-and-grab raid on the existing good causes.
    Given the Government’s substantial majority, the Secretary of State will get the Bill through the House. However, a failure to answer my question will cause disruption and concern for those who make the lottery live by distributing the money to the good causes, severely damaging their confidence in their future and what they can do with the long, continuing flow of lottery resources.
    I have asked the Secretary of State two clear questions. If he is not clear about them, I shall speak to him or his officials outside, so that he can be absolutely clear about what I seek. I am going to a significant arts event elsewhere this evening, but I shall miss most of it because I want to come back for the winding-up speeches to hear answers to my questions. I hope that the Government put at rest the minds of those who distribute money throughout the country. [Interruption.] I did not hear what the Minister for Sport just said.
    Mr. Banks Trust us.
    Mr. Major Where have I heard that before? “No new taxes – trust me,” said the Minister for Sport’s boss. The Government have broken promise after promise. We shall soon find out about the Minister for Sport. I know that he will be here at 9.30 this evening because Chelsea are not playing. I shall be here to hear him answer my two questions.
    If the Minister is in answering mode, perhaps he can answer one or two other questions. Who will bear the cost of setting up the New Opportunities Fund? I hope that it will not be the other good causes, for that would rub salt into an already open wound. Will the Minister answer that at 9.30? Will he also confirm whether there will be further endowments to NESTA at the expense of the other good causes? He must know the answer to that. He cannot ignore the question: either he answers it, or everybody will make the only assumption that they can, that the Government will take more money away. I hope that, in the interests of arts, sports and other fund distributors, the Minister will give us unequivocal answers this evening.
    I shall reiterate one point. I am not, in Luddite fashion, opposing any changes, because I was particularly in favour of the National Lottery etc. Bill, which was introduced when I was Prime Minister. Times change; we learn from experience. There are changes are to be made, and I shall support them, but some of the Secretary of State’s changes are wrong. I would have made other changes – he mentioned one of them. He was right; I would, for example, post millennium, have devoted the sums that are going to the millennium fund to the provision of sports coaching and arts teaching, across – as far as the money would stretch – our mainstream education system. I want us to win the World cup, the five nations trophy, the test matches, the Davis cup. Rooting a love of sport and the arts in schools would have been the right thing to do. Even though the Secretary of State used that suggestion to make a false point, it is absolutely consistent with the sport and arts element of the existing good causes. I was proposing to use money after the millennium fund ended, in order to extend the principles. However, in advance of it ending, the Government have got their sticky fingers on the cash.
    Despite the Government’s astonishing honeymoon, we are coming to know them and how they manoeuvre whenever they are under any pressure at all. They are never too scrupulous in pursuit of their own interests. I hope that, this evening, they will redeem themselves just a little by giving clear-cut answers that show that they will not further pervert the original intention of the lottery, which has so far proceeded with outstanding success.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview at a Huntingdon Post Office – 15 November 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s doorstep interview in outside a Post Office in Huntingdon, held on Friday 15th November 1996.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about the second anniversary of the National Lottery]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    It’s been a stunning success. We established the National Lottery because I saw it as the only way we could provide large amounts of resources to the arts, to heritage, to sport. That’s what happened and we can now look forward. There is something like £300 million every year going into five different good causes including sports and the arts and that is going to revolutionise sporting prospects and revolutionise the availability of money. It’s going very well.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about the mid-week lottery and whether it was a step too far with people spending more money than they could afford?]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I have a higher view of the responsibility of people than you do. I don’t see why the nanny state should stop that. If there’s a demand for it, there’s going to be a mid week lottery. People will make their own responsible decisions

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked Norman Tebbit and the Euro-sceptics]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    Interesting view from Lord Tebbit. It’s not one I share.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked what would he do with the money if he won the lottery]

    PRIME MINISTER:

    I’m not anticipating doing so. It’s rather difficult if you haven’t bought a ticket.

  • Mr Major’s Doorstep Interview in Manchester (I) – 30 July 1996

    Below is the text of Mr Major’s doorstep interview at the Arndale Shopping Centre in Manchester, held on 30th July 1996.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about lottery announcements for Manchester].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    There will be something over three million pounds to help re-build the theatre that will be announced today and there will be some more money from the Government for the Lord Mayor’s Hardship Fund. But I’m principally here not to make those announcements but to have a look at what has happened in Manchester and what needs to be done to rebuild it.

    QUESTION:

    [Mr Major was asked about the 15 million pound football transfer of Alan Shearer].

    PRIME MINISTER:

    He’s a very good footballer.